Archive Record

Object Name

Photocopy

Catalog Number

1953.037.00001

Date

1866

Scope & Content

P. G. T. Beauregard to Charles Henry von Schwartz, July 10, 1866

Physical Appearance: July 10, 1866 - [Pierre] G[ustave] T[outant] Beauregard at London, [England], to Mr. [Charles Henry von] Schwartz, Liverpool, [England] - [Photocopy of original] - Beauregard informs von Schwartz that he and Gen[era]l [Dan] Adams are leaving for Paris in the morning for several weeks. He also states that, on the chance that he is detained longer, he has drawn funds and left them to von Schwartz's and Adams' credit at Mrs. Schroder's. Von Schwartz was a former blockade-runner. Letter is two pages, second page being extremely faint and illegible.

Archival History

This photocopy letter dated July 10, 1866, from Beauregard to von Schwartz was formerly located in the MC 3 B-88 files. The P. G. T. Beauregard Collection contains correspondence and ephemera of Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard (1818-1893), held in the Eleanor S. Brockenbrough Library. The collection is evenly divided between wartime holdings, April 1861-April 1865, and postwar correspondence. Materials range through various theatres of the war under Beauregard's command. Of note are forty-three (43) items running June 1861-April 1865 (formerly known as the C. McC. Reeve Papers), including a letter of May 1864 to General D. H. Hill regarding decisions of President Jefferson Davis, and a report from a staff officer noting the deteriorating situation in Georgia and South Carolina in March 1865. Postwar correspondence involving D. H. Hill, Jubal Early, and William Preston Johnston is primarily devoted to arguing about the memoirs of leading Confederates and writing his own history of the war. See also: Department of South Carolina and Georgia Collection, Prints & Sketches Collection, and Book Collection-Autobiography/Biography. The "William J. Marrin Papers" are letters sent to Beauregard by the former, October 1865-June 1886, during Marrin's aborted attempt to write a biography of the general. The correspondence of William J. Marrin comprises sixty-three (63) letters. Marrin, a New York lawyer and good friend of Beauregard's former Chief-of-Staff, Thomas Jordan, intended to write a biography of General Beauregard. The correspondence deals exclusively with Marrin's preparation, which in the end, came to nothing. Beauregard watched in horror as other Confederate leaders produced their own memoirs, mot of which put themselves in the best possible light and, Beauregard felt, slighted him. Joseph E. Johnston's "Narrative of Military Operations," published in 1874, reduced Beauregard's role at First Manassas. A biography of Albert Sidney Johnston, by his son William Preston Johnston, appeared in 1878 and gave credit for the Shiloh plan of battle to Johnston--not Beauregard. The final straw was former President Jefferson Davis' release of his "Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government" in 1881, that was critical of General Beauregard. The latter decided to refute them all and co-authored "Military Operations of General Beauregard" with Alfred Roman, published in 1884. Charles McCormick Reeve (1847-1947) was a Spanish-American War general. Schooled in the North, Reeve lived in Minnesota after the war, but as a collector-with Virginia antecedents-he kept in touch with General and Mrs. William Ruffin Cox of Richmond, Virginia, she being Vice-Regent of the South Carolina Room of the Confederate Museum. In 1917 he donated to the museum materials that comprise much of the "Beauregard Collection" and the entirety of the "William J. Marrin Papers."